


dont you hear me howling

by Blue_bird16



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Jay Merrick is Skully, M/M, Multi, Non-Sexual Intimacy, nonlinear timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 02:08:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21402409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_bird16/pseuds/Blue_bird16
Summary: Snatches of domesticity between ships passing in the night
Relationships: Hoody/Masky, Hoody/Masky/Skully, Hoody/Skully (Marble Hornets), Jay/Masky, Jay/Timothy "Tim" W., Timothy "Tim" Wright | Masky/Skully (Marble Hornets)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 89





	dont you hear me howling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DrowningInStarlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowningInStarlight/gifts).

> i don't entirely know what this is but i just really really like these boys together. shoutout to DrowningInStarlight for encouraging this.

Masky awkwardly clacked his face against Skully’s. Skully made a small noise in his sleep, shuffling closer to Masky and shoving his feet farther under Hoody’s thigh. Hoody’s hand rested comfortably on Skully’s knee, the other stretched along the back of the old white couch to loosely grip the back of Masky’s neck, a soothing weight. Masky looked down at Skully a moment longer, then raised his gaze to meet Hoody’s. 

_ ‘Alright?’ _ he seemed to ask. Hoody never spoke, but Masky always knew what he wanted to say. 

Masky nodded in response. He pointed back at Hoody questioningly.

_ ‘I’m fine. That thing isn’t around here,’ _ Hoody said. Masky nodded again, reaching up to take Hoody’s hand off his neck to hold it with his own. Skully snuffled in his sleep, slightly muffled by his mask, his face pressing harder into Masky’s stomach where he lay in his lap. Masky started to fiddle with Skully’s hat with his free hand. Masky continued his watch of the front door, just down the hallway from all three of them in the abandoned house. 

“Safe,” Masky finally said out loud, softly. Hoody squeezed his hand in agreement. 

_ ‘For now.’ _

**Return to us** he types. He looks up, catching sight of his partner. 

When did they all become so fragmented? Time is so hard now.

“Jay, lights out,” Tim slurs from his position face planted into the motel pillow. Jay hums noncommittally, eyes wide as he stares at the newest totheark video. The empty half of the bed yawns invitingly and unnoticed behind him. 

“It’s still gonna be there when we wake up, go to sleep,” Tim whines. It’s late, very late, really it’s early now, and this is the first bed either of them have seen in days, he’s allowed to whine. In fact, he’s  _ earned _ it, just this once. 

“In a minute,” Jay mutters, hitting replay for the upteenth time. 

There’s a beat of silence where Jay absently thinks he’s won when a pillow wallops him in the back of the head. “TIM?!” he squeaks out, nearly falling out of the shitty motel chair as he whirls around to face the other man. 

Tim looks entirely too smug with half his face smooshed into a pillow that probably has bedbugs with their luck, eyes glinting in the flicker of the totheark video as he fails to seem innocent. Jay groans. Loudly. 

“I’m tired.  _ You’re _ tired. Come to bed,” Tim orders, smile breaking incredibly quickly through his serious facade. Jay looks over at the laptop, the video already ended again, and reluctantly shuts it. 

“Good man,” Tim says through a yawn, wriggling into another comfortable position on the bed. 

“Asshat,” Jay grunts with no heat behind it, and grabs the pillow Tim so generously threw at him on his way to the bed. 

Tim grunts slightly when Jay unceremoniously flops backwards onto the bed, but makes no further noise as Jay shifts around, kicking off his shoes and flinging off his hoodie without leaving his horizontal position. 

Eventually stillness settles over the small, dark room. Jay is left to stare at the blinking red light of the camera set up near the bathroom door, mind still racing through codebreaking techniques and theories both he and his Twitter followers’ have come up with and idle thoughts of where Alex or the Operator are now and–

“I can hear you thinking from here,” Tim says huskily by Jay’s shoulder. Jay turns his head to be nose to forehead with him. Jay angles his eyes down, just barely making out Tim’s features in the gloom cast by the streetlight outside the blinds. His eyes are still closed, and at first Jay thinks this is a badly timed instance of sleep talking when Tim quietly speaks again: “Penny for your thoughts?”

“Just the same old stuff,” Jay responds lowly, not wanting to break the illusion of peace and safety held like a breath in the room. Tim hums back, and Jay thinks that’s the end of it until Tim frees one of his arms from underneath him to throw over Jay’s stomach. Jay’s breath catches momentarily in his throat. Tim still doesn’t open his eyes. 

“Tim?” he eventually breathes out. Tim hums again. Jay carefully rests his arm farthest from Tim parallel to the one the other man has resting on him, just barely brushing against it with the natural movement of Jay’s breathing. His fingers just touch Tim’s shirt.

“Don’t want you sneaking back to the video in the middle of the night. Go to sleep, Jay,” Tim mumbles, tilting his head just slightly forward to rest his chin against Jay’s shoulder. Jay doesn’t respond, and quietly notes how Tim’s breathing eventually deepens and evens out until he’s sure Tim is really, very asleep. 

It’s such a small movement, but they’ve both become very light sleepers after...christ, has it been years at this point? Years on the road, on the run. It’s such a small movement.

Jay gently hooks his fingers into Tim’s shirt. 

**COME BACK** he types. **FIND ME.** _Come home to me_, he doesn’t say.

“What do you even expect to find this time?” Tim demands. Between them, out of frame of the camera, he squeezes Jay’s hand. Jay squeezes back, keeping the camera pointedly up from their hands. 

“I don’t know, Tim,  _ something _ . Maybe that other masked guy? I just want  _ answers _ ,” Jay responded. Tim drummed his fingers against the back of Jay’s hand three times. 

“So we’re walking around as bait for the guy in the yellow hoodie?” Tim asked. Jay squeezed Tim’s hand, and kept that tight hold. 

“We found those tapes in the hole last time we were out wandering aimlessly,” Jay pointed out helplessly. Tim rubbed his thumb soothingly against Jay’s first finger until he relaxed. 

“Ok. Ok, find the other guy in the mask and what, hope he sticks around to answer a few questions? That he doesn’t up and run again? That he doesn’t come at us with a big rock?” Tim listed off absentmindedly. Jay smirked at him.

“Funny, I seem to remember a different masked guy going after someone with a big rock,” Jay teased, letting go of Tim’s hand only to interlace their fingers back together. 

“Shut it,” Tim responded. 

**here is something**

**i have wanted to**

**show you**

and he hopes he’s got the timing right he misses them 

both with an ache he can’t get rid of and he

just wants them back and with

him and Safe again but

safe is never going to be an option

again.

He leaves the door unlocked when he leaves. 

The house is empty again, but this is the first time it’s truly abandoned. 

“Tim?” Jay groans, reaching blindly across the suddenly empty bed. The sudden shifting of the bed had woken him up, so it wasn’t like he was expecting Tim to still be in the bed, but a man can hope. 

“Tim?” Jay asks louder, pushing himself up and rubbing at his eyes before looking over at the clock. Four am. “What the hell,” Jay whispers to himself. A quick glance around the room verifies the camera is still recording, but the room is empty. Jay heaves himself to his feet to check the lock. 

Satisfied with what he finds, he turns to the half-open bathroom door. The light isn’t on, but it’s not like there’s a lot of places in the main room for Tim to hide. Still half-awake and not yet panicking, Jay takes the camera off its tripod and uses its night vision setting to peek into the bathroom. 

Masky is standing in front of the mirror, appearing to be examining himself. Jay freezes. It’s jarring, seeing the mask on the man when he’s barefoot and just wearing a wrinkled t-shirt and rumpled boxers instead of his jeans and jacket getup. Jay faintly notices a pressure building in the back of his head. 

Masky is making eye contact with him through the mirror. Jay suddenly, viscerally remembers the night he was being chased in the woods by the figure in front of him. 

Minutes must have passed in the silence between them. Jay hardly dares breathe. 

Masky shifts first, half turning to make direct eye contact with Jay, who can feel his heart trying to escape his chest. Jay notices something held in the man’s hand, but can’t make out what it is in the green light of the camera. He focuses back on the mask. 

“You’re not Tim right now,” Jay doesn’t ask. Masky nods anyway. Jay exhales hard. “Are you going to hurt me again?” he asks. Masky shakes his head no. Jay isn’t sure he can trust that. 

“Do you know what’s going on?” he asks. Masky tilts his head to the side curiously. Jay laughs nervously. 

“Jay,” Masky says, and his voice sounds absolutely wrecked, deeper than Tim’s normal voice and rough with something harsher than sleep and cigarettes. In one syllable Jay can hear so much emotion, desperation. It’s enough to make a man’s knees weak. 

“What do you want?” Jay demands. 

“Jay,” Masky repeats, sounding infinitely sadder than he did just a moment ago. Jay swallows, double-checking the camera is still running. 

“You only know one syllable words?” Jay asks. Masky shrugs, and the gesture is just so normal, but so different than Tim, that Jay can’t help but to laugh a little again. 

“Do you know what’s going on?” Jay repeats. There’s a ringing in his ears, getting louder the longer they stand there. Masky takes a step towards him, sending Jay stumbling back until his knees hit the bed. Masky hovers in the bathroom doorway, too close and yet too far away. Jay suddenly desperately wants the man in front of him to be near him, but pushes that thought away because the man in front of him...the man in front of him is…

Skully carefully places the camera on the bed. He feels naked without his mask, but there really isn’t the time to go digging through Jay’s disaster of a bag to unearth it. Masky holds out a hand. Skully gratefully takes it, gently tugging until Masky is settled on his lap, the mask cool against the still sleep-warm skin of his neck. Skully reaches up and begins stroking his hair. 

“Third,” Masky says sadly. Skully heaves another sigh, the rise and fall of his chest gently jostling Masky. 

“I miss him, too.” 

The next morning Jay and Tim wake up in bed together, the camera still rolling on its tripod near the bathroom door. Tim busies himself with tidying up the room before checkout as Jay switches out the battery on the camera, already dreading the hours of dark footage of the room featuring nothing but Tim’s light snores and the shuffle of sleeping bodies. Neither of them remember the events of the previous night. 

Outside, hidden behind dumpsters and fences and bushes, Hoody watches them load up the car. 

**foun**

**dyou**

**fore**

**ver**


End file.
